


Tact and Charisma

by adoxyinherear



Category: Dragon Age: Inquisition
Genre: F/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-04-21
Updated: 2021-02-02
Packaged: 2021-03-01 18:01:11
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 9
Words: 6,188
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/23771233
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/adoxyinherear/pseuds/adoxyinherear
Summary: “Your tongue is loose enough,” she insisted, neither moving to pour a drink or return to reading. Varric studied her in this rare posture of ease. It softened her edges, or maybe the fire did. He leaned forward with a smile and poured a drink for her before standing. It was a reversal of their usual, the Seeker towering over him, demanding, waiting to be disappointed.But Varric wasn’t either of those things. There was no peeking between her fingers from this vantage so he met her eyes instead, flint-dark in the firelight. And, he noted with surprise, beautiful.Varric winked.“What would you know about my tongue?”--This started as a series of one-shots featuring my favorite dwarf and glowering human. It is increasingly becoming a chronological thing. Updates sporadic.
Relationships: Cassandra Pentaghast/Varric Tethras
Comments: 46
Kudos: 108





	1. Loose Tongues

Varric shifted in his chair, back arched, knuckles pressed against the rough surface of the table in a vain effort to release a cramp. He’d been writing for hours, but not a single word he wanted anyone to read, ever.

Including the letters he’d penned to creditors.

A drink would help. It would either enliven him with an _actual_ good idea or he’d abandon the pen for bed, senses dulled enough for dreaming.

Varric was surprised to find the Seeker before the fire, knees drawn up to her chest with a book propped against them, heedless of the dirt on her boots and everything else, besides.

“Are you still awake?” He sat down across from her, drawing the bottle and cup someone, maybe Cassandra, had planted there. “And reading, what? Some treatise on warfare? How to elicit confessions from recalcitrant prisoners?”

She looked up from her book, snapping it shut and holding a hand over the cover to keep Varric from confirming its contents. He grinned; the dwarf loved a good riddle.

“What I am reading is none of your concern,” Cassandra huffed, pulling the bottle back toward her before Varric could pour himself a drink. “That’s my cup.”

“And it’s empty,” he observed. “By all means carry on then, Seeker. But if it _is_ the latter, wine’s a proven tool for loosening tongues.”

“Your tongue is loose enough,” she insisted, neither moving to pour a drink or return to reading. Varric studied her in this rare posture of ease. It softened her edges, or maybe the fire did. He leaned forward with a smile and poured a drink for her before standing. It was a reversal of their usual, the Seeker towering over him, demanding, waiting to be disappointed.

But Varric wasn’t either of those things. There was no peeking between her fingers from this vantage so he met her eyes instead, flint-dark in the firelight. And, he noted with surprise, beautiful.

Varric winked.

“What would you know about my tongue?”


	2. Stuck

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> There's a cave-in. And snark.

“Chuckles picked a hell of a time to take a sabbatical.”

Varric coughed, peering through the dust and the gloom to spy Cassandra bending over the crumpled form of the Inquisitor. A chill raised the hair on his arms.

“Is she okay?”

It was a moment before the Seeker responded.

“She’s alive, but unconscious.”

There was a rustling, no doubt for bandages and a poultice. Varric took the opportunity to observe the collapsed tunnel, illuminated only just by the light that filtered from far above them. He shuddered. It would take hours to clear the rubble provided the path ahead remained open, and structurally sound.

And he hated being underground.

Elven glyphs glowed faintly on the walls, the source of the Inquisitor’s temptation to take this detour out of the Exalted Plains. She was always curious about the ancient history of her people – a sentiment Varric didn’t share for his own, but one he noted even the intractable Seeker indulged her in. It was impossible to say no to the Inquisitor. She reminded him of Bianca, that way.

And the Seeker, too, if he was being honest with himself.

As if summoned by his thoughts, Cassandra joined him where the broken stones met the uneven ground. Varric didn’t need to see her face to know that she was frowning.

“She should be able to shift the stones, when she wakes,” Cassandra offered at last, though her tone was far from confident. Varric looked over at the Inquisitor, a bandage plastered where a stone had struck her in the head when the tunnel collapsed.

“Looks like we’ll be stuck here for awhile,” Varric grumbled, stepping away from Cassandra to settle himself against the wall. He reached for his water bladder before changing his mind at the last minute, removing a flask from his rucksack, instead. He heard but paid no mind to Cassandra’s disapproving hiss.

Rather than sitting, the Seeker began to pace, eyes darting now and again to the unconscious Inquisitor. He watched her, a hand restless on the hilt of her sheathed sword, shoulders stiff, hips swaying. For as regimented as she could sometimes – _always_ – be, there was a fluid grace to the way the Seeker moved through the world that Varric couldn’t deny, a rhythm to her steps that begged his blood beat to the same. Dust stirred beneath her boots, and something in him stirred, too.

“If you’re trying to bring down the rest of the ruin to avoid having to talk to me, there are quicker ways,” he observed. Their conversations had only ever gone one of two ways – violently or swiftly concluded, respectively, so what did he care if she didn’t want to sit and have a drink with him while they waited for the Inquisitor to wake up?

“I have no desire to be entombed with you for eternity,” Cassandra replied with a huff, though she stopped pacing and, after a moment’s hesitation, crouched beside Varric. It was about as relaxed of a posture as he figured she was going to assume, he figured. Varric held out the flask.

“It’s important to stay hydrated in times of stress,” he volunteered when she didn’t take it right away. It was dark, but still he saw her fingers twitch an instant before she relieved him of the bottle. Grinning, Varric watched as she took a sip, winced, and then had the audacity to pocket the remainder.

“It is also imperative to remain clear-headed in a crisis,” she insisted, and if he hadn’t known better, Varric could’ve sworn she was teasing him.

She _wasn’t_ teasing him, was she?

“I don’t know, you seem to have everything well in hand,” Varric replied. “You’re sure you wouldn’t rather I pass out and provide a convenient reason for leaving me behind?”

Cassandra studied him frankly in the near darkness, her expression impossible to read. It wasn’t the Seeker’s usual disapproving mask, but something else, something that Varric didn’t recognize.

At least, not from Cassandra.

He shifted uncomfortably, wishing she hadn’t taken his flask, before resorting finally to fingering Bianca’s stock, her worn flight groove. She felt like ribs, like skin, reminding him of someone lost to his touch a long time ago.

When Cassandra spoke, her voice was as soft as her features had briefly been.

“I’ve given up on getting rid of you, Varric.”


	3. A Better Story Than a Hand of Cards

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Cassandra does not understand bluffing.

Varric considered his cards: two knights, two drakes, and a song, and none the same theme as the others. It made for a better story than it did for a hand of Wicked Grace.

“I’ll see you and raise you a silver,” he said, meeting Josephine’s eyes across the table. Ruffles was about to take him for all he had but losing to her was a little bit like losing to your mother: she always made you feel like you’d tried your best.

“Is that wise?” 

Cassandra was at his shoulder and didn’t even have the decency to whisper. Varric winced.

“It’s a real shame nobody asked for your opinion, Seeker,” he said without looking at her, maintaining the inviting smile he’d issued across the table. He still had a chance. Maybe.

Josephine’s grin didn’t quite reach her eyes. She tossed a silver onto the growing pile between them and drew another card. Varric watched her shuffle it into her hand, not in the least surprised when it wasn’t the same one she laid down in front of her: the Angel of Death.

“It seems our game is at an end, Master Tethras,” she purred, following the Angel with the laying out of her full hand: three of the remaining angels and two knights. Varric whistled.

“Tell me, Ruffles, have you ever met a Rivaini pirate by the name of Isabela? Because she’s the only other person I’ve seen cheat like you do.”

Josephine only laughed, drawing her winnings toward her with perfectly manicured hands. Varric leaned back in his chair, crossing one leg over the other before scowling at Cassandra. Not because of what she’d said or even because he’d lost, but because she was hovering instead of taking the empty chair beside him and pouring them both a drink. It’s what he would’ve done. 

It’s what he really needed to give up wishing - furtively, frustratingly, with maybe only a quarter of his conscious mind - she’d do.

“If you’re planning to kick me while I’m down, I’ve got some letters from creditors you can stuff your boots with,” he drawled, meeting Cassandra’s eyes. They widened in surprise, just a little, the effect softening Cassandra’s usually stiff expression. 

“That was not my intention,” Cassandra began, regaining her composure. But he’d seen it, the silk just under her skin. He fought not to imagine what it felt like. 

Easier said than done.

“But?” Varric prompted.

“But,” Cassandra bit out, reaching past him to collect his discarded hand. It brought her closer - but not as close as when she bent to recover the two cards he’d wedged into discrete notches underneath of the table: a third knight and the missing angel. She held them up like an accusation, and Varric shrugged, grinning.

“You’ve got me all figured out, Seeker.”

Her eyes narrowed. She tossed all seven cards on the table in front of him.

“The only thing I have figured out is why you prefer this seating arrangement.”

Varric watched her leave, then watched the candles burning down on the table in the empty chamber, musing on how the sway of hips wasn’t entirely unlike a guttering flame. 


	4. Blush

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Varric interrupts Cassandra reading, obviously.

Cassandra had abandoned the practice yard for the interior of Herald’s Rest, but only because it was raining. Pouring, really. She was seated near a window and couldn’t even see the castle through the storm. ****

Though she’d declined Cabot’s offer of a tankard of beer, she had consented to a modest pour of wine and sat sipping it, her back to the room, poring over Varric’s latest romance serial.

> _Just beneath her gleaming breastplate, the Knight-Captain’s traitorous heart beat a staccato rhythm._

> _“Guardsman, it is not appropriate for us to meet like this.”_

> _His eyes darkened with desire as he reached for her ungloved hands._

> _“To hell with what’s appropriate.”_

Cassandra only just kept from gasping aloud, closing the book around her finger before reaching for her glass with her opposite hand. Like the wine, she had to savor this latest chapter - she had no interest in groveling before Varric for another. Taking a sip, Cassandra opened the book again, a clap of thunder outside coinciding with the tavern door banging open and shut. Utterly absorbed, she didn’t notice a shadow darken her shoulder until the low, appreciative chuckle a few moments later. 

“I’m glad to see we share a love of illicit liaisons in Chantry gardens,” Varric announced, circling Cassandra before the fist that wasn’t slamming the book shut could grab him by the collar. He practically danced to the chair opposite her and sat down.

“We do _not_ ,” Cassandra said stiffly, the high color in her cheeks retreating. “How long have you been standing there?”

“Long enough to see you blush.”

Cassandra made a sound in the back of her throat that was somewhere between being sick, and skewering a man.

“You should know there’s nothing illicit about a chaste declaration of love.”

“Chaste?” Varric’s brow quirked. It was a maddening expression; Cassandra wanted to smash it off his face with her shield. “You must not have gotten to the scene near the well, then.”

“There’s another scene?”

She spoke again too quickly and cursed herself for it, the note of hope in her voice almost as bad as Varric’s smirk. 

“Come on, Seeker, you’re a hot-blooded woman,” he said, voice low as he leaned across the table - closer, but not so close that Cassandra could reach him. “There’s nothing wrong with that.”

Cassandra sniffed, collecting her wine glass from the table.

“Forgive me if I don’t trust your judgment.”

Varric threw his hands up in the air, shrugging. He’d made himself comfortable and there was already steam rising from his clothes as they quickly dried. The candlelight caught the gold in his hair and drew Cassandra’s eyes to the ‘V’ of rain-glistened skin bared by his shirt. Her eyes snapped up almost immediately, flushed with fury and embarrassment both. But Varric’s face was worse than the rest of him, giddy with victory.

“If not my judgment, then trust my imagination,” he drawled, winking.

“Good _night_ , Varric.”

It was still raining, but she could read in the armory as well as the tavern. 

At least there he couldn’t see her blush.


	5. A Terrible Idea

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Varric in his own head about Cassandra at a not great time.

In some distant, dim part of his brain, absent the influence of his heart - and to be honest, another more notably faithless organ - Varric recognized he needed to pay attention to this fight if he wanted to live to see the end of it.

But Cassandra.

Brow bloodied, sweat on her upper lip, and teeth bared in a ferocious charge, she was a vision that demanded he give Bianca a rest and take up a quill instead. When her blade punched through a break in her opponent’s armor, voice raised in a victorious shout, Varric’s stomach clenched in response.

An enterprising Venatori chose that moment to hurl a ball of ice at him and Varric only just managed to leap out of the way, grunting with the effort. 

Even as he loosed another bolt, circling the Venatori penned in by Dorian’s glyphs, Varric was half in his head and telling a story: a charming rogue, an irascible warrior, the kind of chemistry no alchemist could cook up.

> _Her dark eyes snapped with fury and desire._

> _“I don’t know if I want to kiss you or kill you,” she said, her plush lips nearly deciding the outcome without their consent._

> _“Don’t I get a say?”_

> _Her voice was hardly more than a growl as she advanced upon him, her body’s heat reaching out for his._

> _“You talk too much already.”_

Varric almost fumbled a poison. Cassandra dispatched the last of the Tevinter mages with a thrust of her shield, glancing back over her shoulder at the Inquisitor with the kind of smug, satisfied expression Varric realized he quite desperately wanted to be responsible for, under different circumstances.

Like his bed.

Varric’s imagination - lines of prose and the lines of her body, softened without her armor - obscured his field of vision. Dorian leaned against his staff just to the right of him, the smell of the mage’s cologne interfering with Varric’s attempts to figure out how he’d describe the scent of Cassandra’s skin. 

“It’s a terrible idea, you know,” Dorian said knowingly, a hint of a smile in his words that Varric had no desire to return. Eyes on Cassandra as she bent to clean her blade in the grass, Varric groaned with equal parts frustration and barely suppressed lust.

“Terrible ideas aren’t the sole property of the Imperium, Sparkler.”


	6. A Favor

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Cassandra's been tasked with writing a poem. Varric's writing smut. OTP. 
> 
> Another little piece courtesy of DADWC.

It wasn’t that he was hiding from Josephine, exactly. But the idea of being fitted by a court tailor for a formal uniform was dredging up memories of the merchant’s guild that Varric hadn’t thought about in years - and didn’t want to.

So instead of haunting his usual hearth in earshot of courtier gossip, he’d tucked himself, a bottle of cheap wine, and a half-finished manuscript into a disused corner above the forge. There were tables and chairs there, not a bad place for a drink and a game of cards if the Herald’s Rest became too boisterous. Or for a bit of writing, if one were so inclined. 

Varric told himself that was why he’d chosen the spot, and not the view of the practice yard below. He carried on with the lie for three-quarters of an hour, his quill stubbornly poised above a blank page, until he had to concede that Cassandra wasn’t going to show up to beat a dummy senseless just because he wanted to watch her do it.

With a groan, Varric turned away from the window, staring down at the last sentence he’d written.

> _She was the Knight-Captain first; her duty must come before her heart._

He smirked, thinking of Aveline and her awkward courtship with Donnic. While it was true that the Guard-Captain had been the original inspiration for the Swords & Shields heroine, Varric had to admit that he was no longer imagining a redhead quarreling with herself over matters of romance and honor.

Bending over the page, he wrote a few more sentences, scratched them out, and started again.

> _She could not permit herself to imagine the Guardsman on his knees before her, worshipful, murmuring his devotion. What had happened in the Chantry garden would never - could never - happen again, or she risked losing her post._

> _Just as she had lost control of every sense when his hand, freed from an armored glove, skated up her thigh._

“What are you doing?”

Varric lurched away from the parchment like it’d caught fire. Cassandra stood opposite the table where he sat, the candlelight and shadow working in concert to soften her sharp features. The effect was not lost on him.

“Dodging my responsibilities,” he offered, smirk sliding into place. Cassandra made a disgusted noise, but didn’t move. After a moment, Varric idly shuffled a blank page over the half-written one. “Did you have something to add to the list?”

“No,” Cassandra replied. Still she lingered, and Varric’s pulse quickened. 

“You want to join me? There’s room for two and the provisions aren’t bad.”

The blacksmith’s hammer began to beat a rhythm below and Varric’s blood wanted to answer. Maybe it was something about being a dwarf. Maybe he was just horny. 

Cassandra took the chair opposite, a surprise. More surprising still, she leaned forward over clasped hands to meet his eyes.

“I have a favor to ask you.”

“Me?” Varric laughed. “Are you sure you want to be indebted to _me_ , Seeker?”

“It won’t be for long,” she growled, retreating a fraction. Varric held up his hands in surrender, desperate to hear the rest, to keep her in the chair and close enough to see where her eyeliner had smudged.

“I’m listening.”

Cassandra shifted uncomfortably, looking at the floor before meeting his eyes again. Her discomfort was so out of character Varric’s stomach cooled with dread. What if something had happened? Was it possible for the Inquisition - who was he kidding, _the world_ \- to be in even more trouble than it already was?

His agony lasted only as long as it took for Cassandra to grind out her next few words.

“Josephine has asked me to write a verse to present to Empress Celine. I am hopelessly underqualified.”

“Why not Nightingale? She was a bard, after all.”

“That is precisely why it cannot be Leliana,” Cassandra huffed. “She claims her attempts to mimic Nevarran style will be transparent, and the Empress is especially interested in Nevarran verse.”

“I’ve got to ask: what passes for poetry in Nevarra?”

Cassandra’s eyes narrowed and Varric knew he balanced on the thinnest edge of a blade - or a maul, and she was about to beat him with it.

“It is… grim. Less concerned with beauty than it is with death.”

He knew better than to comment on her fitness to write something like that.

“I write fiction, Seeker - I’m not sure I’m the best person to help with something like this.”

“You are the only person who can help,” Cassandra insisted, the raw edge in her voice tremulous, a vibration that turned and twisted in his gut. She withdrew a crumpled bit of paper from a pouch on her belt. “I’ve gotten a start.”

She didn’t trail off hopefully, didn’t ask him outright, didn’t waver. Her lips parted, though, apple-red and plush, a touch of pink tongue visible. 

Varric held out his hand, and she slid the paper between his fingers. It sounded like sheets, like legs parting, and he was grateful for the table between them and the wood obstructing the view from the waist down. 

There were two lines written in her ragged hand.

> _Some men collect skulls and others collect hearts  
>  Because they like punching holes in things._

His laugh was uncontrollable, full-bellied and appreciative. Cassandra snatched the paper back from him, expression furious.

“You weren’t supposed to laugh!”

“It’s not supposed to be funny?”

“ _No_ ,” Cassandra insisted, rising from her chair. Without thinking, Varric reached for her, hand closing around her forearm, gentle but firm.

“It’s perfect. If the Empress doesn’t like it, she’s a simpleton.”

Cassandra’s expression softened. She didn’t move and it was a beat too long before Varric released her, keenly aware of her body’s heat against his palm. 

“I still don’t think it’s funny,” she replied haltingly, smoothing the paper between her hands. “It’s true.”

“Sometimes you have to laugh at the truth to keep from crying, Seeker.”

“Is that what you do, when you’re writing?”

Varric shook his head, rueful.

“There’s a reason my crime serial and the _Tale of the Champion_ are the only things that sell for me - I’m too depressed to make people laugh.”

He chuckled as he said it but Cassandra saw right through him. Her lips, thinned with concern, were no less distracting. 

“You don’t need to make people laugh to be a good writer,” she said, hesitating before continuing. “Or a good friend.”

And then, as though she couldn’t bear to hear what he might say next - or what she might - she stuffed the paper back into her pouch and stole down the stairs, leaving Varric clenching and unclenching an empty fist.

As he tidied his papers, he consoled himself with the fact that at least the Knight-Captain wasn’t the only one with a conflicted heart.


	7. An Apology

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Cassandra makes a peace offering. She's terrible at it.

Subtlety was not chief among Cassandra’s qualities; she had aunts who’d insisted it was beyond the realm of possibility for her behavior. So when she arrived in the throne room before even the most gossip-starved courtiers to deposit a thick sheaf of expensive papers and a pot of wine-red ink on the table where Varric did most of his work, she felt rather like congratulating herself. There was even a note, though it amounted to less than five words.

> _Consider this an apology._

> _\- Cassandra_

Cassandra smirked. She hadn’t said she was sorry - she was, a little - and she hadn’t admitted she was wrong - because she wasn’t - but Varric had shown he was inclined to play the victim and would assume what he wanted.

Centering the gift on the table with a huff of satisfaction, she turned to descend to the practice yard and nearly plowed right into the dwarf and the steaming mug of coffee he carried.

“Whoa, Seeker,” Varric admonished, sweeping out of the way without spilling so much as a drop while she recovered herself. It made her suddenly, infuriatingly irritated, her cheeks hot.

But Varric was looking past her to the thick, creamy paper Josephine had imported from Orlais at Cassandra’s request, at the ink Vivienne promised was archival quality. His brows crept toward his hairline.

“For me? If I didn’t know any better, I’d say you were trying to seduce me,” he said, his graveled tone equal parts appreciation and maddening flirtation. Cassandra snorted her displeasure. She should’ve known this was a bad idea. She should’ve known he’d take it absolutely the worst and wrong way.

She should’ve gotten up earlier.

“I felt a gesture was warranted, after our disagreement regarding Hawke,” Cassandra offered stiffly, determined to steer the conversation back into safer territory. 

“After you pushed me into a table, you mean.”

She blanched.

“Yes.”

“You called me some rather colorful names, as well. Though I suppose I should thank you; I wrote them down for my next serial.”

“If you’re going to insist on being a horse’s ass I’ll give it to Dorian.”

Varric held up a hand in his own defense, the other still clutching the mug. 

“And provide him just the tools he needs to begin a treatise on Fereldan incivility? You wouldn’t dare,” he replied, circling around her to the table and running his fingers along the crisp edges of the paper. The gesture was as tender as his tone, softening as he continued. “You didn’t have to do this. But thank you.”

Cassandra wanted to note that he hadn’t said he was sorry, either, that he hadn’t admitted to being wrong, either. But all her brain was willing to catalogue was the way his tone lowered in gratitude, not a whisper but something intimate all the same. It made her feel exposed, open to something she hadn’t realized she’d consented to.

Something she hadn’t realized she’d sought.

“You’re welcome,” she answered, because there wasn’t anything else to say. Cassandra met Varric’s eyes, their usual twinkle subdued. 

“Have you had breakfast yet? I’ll walk with you,” he said, a touch too quickly - or was she imagining it? Varric gestured with his cup. “I forgot a sweetbread for Ruffles. She’s usually been working for at least an hour by now and she never remembers to eat.”

Though she’d already had a few small, sweet apples and cheese, Cassandra’s stomach twisted and she told herself it was hunger. She was nodding, waiting for him to cross to her, to fall in step beside her, to smell the surprisingly pleasant combination of the oil he used to polish Bianca’s stock and the soap he lathered with to shave. She felt uncharacteristically _eager_.

“Are we having breakfast? I’m famished.”

As though summoned by Varric’s earlier sentiment, Dorian appeared in the doorway from the rotunda, eyes already perfectly lined and hair coiffed. He looked between the pair, appraising, his smile insufferable. Cassandra’s appetite disappeared. 

“Cullen is waiting on a report. Please go on without me.”

Striding past them both, Cassandra felt sweat prickle at her brow, under her collar, her palms. She hadn’t run through her morning exercises, and it was still cold enough that her breath puffed out before her on the ramparts.

She decided she wouldn’t think about it.

Maybe her aunts were right. Maybe she wasn’t subtle.


	8. Somebody Wins

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Varric's caught reading some smut.

Pacing the stones before the fire with a stack of unanswered letters and a not insignificant number of bills on the table behind him, Varric’s attention was drawn only by the door to Josephine’s chambers and, beyond, the war table and a closeted meeting of the Inquisitor’s closest advisors. 

Which included Cassandra.

It had been hours. He’d nearly drained a bottle of wine, had written a few pages of his latest serial before consigning them to the fire, had regaled Gatsi with a scene he’d deleted from The Tale of the Champion - at Isabela’s request. Varric justified it to himself with the fact that she’d only said he couldn’t publish it; not that he couldn’t tell it. 

And that if he had to die, he’d rather be murdered for talking too much by a pissed off pirate in a flamboyant hat than be cut down by some damned demon.

His feet were beginning to complain from being confined to boots for far longer than usual, but he wasn’t about to go to bed. Not until he’d heard what, exactly, they were planning for this wild march to the Arbor Wilds. He sat down in a chair, reaching for a book at random and opening to an equally indifferent page.

> _His polished cuirass discarded, her ladyship swooned at the sight of tawny muscle glistening from exertion. He’d sheathed his sword, as well, but if his tightened breeches were any indication, it was only the first of such acts to be undertaken that night._

Varric groaned, turning the book over to read the cover. _Callipygian Cuirassiers_. How exactly had such contrived garbage from the Randy Dowager ended up in his things? There was a note tucked in between the cover and the first page, and he unfolded it to see Leliana’s delicate scrawl.

> _For your research._

The woman was crazy enough to domesticate a nug if she thought Varric needed to research something so trifling. His latest crime serial was selling well in Orlais as well as in Kirkwall, and there wasn’t a thread of romance to be had. No time, what with all the bloodshed. As for his other writing… that was personal. 

Perhaps his reading could be personal, too. 

Varric opened the romance again, thinking of how he’d been struggling in his last chapter to bring the two reluctant lovers together and that there might be some narrative guidance to be found among the cuirassiers. He was interrupted when a slight grunt behind him announced that he was no longer alone.

“What are you reading?”

The Seeker’s eyes flashed when Varric turned, startled, to meet her gaze. He looked past her to where Cullen and the Inquisitor continued to talk, gesticulating wildly. They’d been at it for a few minutes, which meant Cassandra had likely been standing there long enough to have asked the question only out of politeness.

“Nightingale has a very twisted sense of humor,” he replied deftly, deciding it was better to tell her the truth than attempt to lie. She thought he was lying all the time, anyway, and there was a part of him that felt an urgency toward correcting that assumption - sometimes he told the truth. When something really mattered - _when someone really mattered_ \- he told the truth. 

“Perhaps you’d like to borrow it when I’ve finished?”

Cassandra’s gaze flicked down the cover, rewarding Varric’s honesty with a flush of color to her cheeks. He couldn’t blame the wine for the heat that climbed his own neck, its source deep in his stomach.

“I doubt it would be to my tastes,” Cassandra replied with a sniff. She looked tired after the counsel, but no less beautiful - her eyeliner was smudged, her dark braid begging to be let down. He imagined his fingers raking it free, his palm on the back of her neck, his thumb trailing heat down her spine.

Varric turned the book in his hands, expression teasing. The Randy Dowager’s review was printed on the front as well as the title.

“I can see why. ‘Hardly a Tethras,’ according to the reviewer. And I know how much you enjoy my work,” he murmured, wielding his own name like a weapon. But it was the Seeker who drove the metaphorical blade home.

“We all have our faults, Varric,” she said, voice lethally soft, edged with a venom that nevertheless sounded sweet to his ears. “Our weaknesses.”

He let out a breath when she walked by only to suck it back in again when she turned sharply and snatched the book from his hands. She didn’t smile - the Seeker wasn’t a woman who smiled off the battlefield or outside the bedroom, Varric imagined - but something colored her expression as she strode out of the Great Hall having stolen his smut, some secret victory.

And he’d be damned if he could figure out who’d won.


	9. Like One of His Stories

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Varric gives Cassandra a backrub after a day of getting pummeled by Red Templars. She has feelings about it.

The Inquisitor had been overlong in negotiations with Fairbanks. If Solas hadn’t been with her, Cassandra might’ve assumed there was something more going on. Of course, it was entirely possibly there _was_ something more going on, and it simply didn’t involve the refugee leader.

Cassandra rolled her neck, blushing at the thought. A groan escaped her at the motion. The Red Templars were ruthless opponents and Cassandra felt like she’d been throwing herself against a bulwark all day. Her neck and shoulders were twisted, tight, and brutally sore, unlikely to recover after a night spent sleeping on the ground. She shed her gloves and attempted to work the muscles there, wincing as much from how ineffective the motion was as she did from the pain.

“Need a hand, Seeker? Or two?”

Varric’s smirk was evident in his tone; she didn’t even need to see his face. Didn’t _want_ to see his face.

“I’m fine,” Cassandra said, words clipped, hand dropping to her lap. 

“You’re not,” Varric insisted, emerging from the darkness on the opposite side of the fire. “I saw you take about a dozen punches from one of those Red Templar Behemoths. I’m impressed you’re still able to stand.”

“I’m not,” Cassandra replied, her sarcasm touched with a bit of genuine amusement as she gestured to her seated position.

Varric circled the fire, drawing just close enough that she had to look up to see him. It was a novel experience, as she was so used to glowering down at the dwarf. This vantage provided another angle, his shaven jaw touched with red-gold where the fire’s light caught the bristle of hairs there.

“Let me help,” he said, frank instead of teasing her, for once. Varric held up his hands, displaying the broad, square palms and thick, strong fingers. “I might not be up to Orzammar’s standards but I’m physiologically suited to breaking rocks and loosening sore muscles.”

The thought of Varric’s hands on her neck and shoulders renewed the flame in Cassandra’s cheeks and it was that more than anything that prompted her sharp nod of consent. If she refused, that would be admitting there was anything more to his offer, to her acceptance, than two people who had fought beside each other ensuring they’d live to fight beside each other another day. There was no medic, no medicinal bath, and nothing but elfroot to chew. She’d have done the same for another of the Seekers and they for her, in her years before the Inquisition.

She didn’t look at him as she unbuckled her cuirass and laid it beside her, followed by the thickly padded coat she wore underneath. Despite the humidity, with only a linen shirt between her and the night, Cassandra shivered. Varric waited patiently, not looking at her.

“If you break my neck everyone will know it was you,” she said sharply, and Varric’s chuckle as he moved to stand behind her was appreciative.

“Funny, I was going to tell you the same thing.”

Cassandra felt his thumbs first, one on either side of her neck where it curved to meet her shoulders. He pressed hard, his remaining fingers a stabilizing weight against her collarbone. His thumbs moved in circles, kneading, delivering the kind of pressure and pain Cassandra knew was part of breaking down the toxins in her inflamed muscles.

From her neck he traveled across her shoulders, the thin fabric of her shirt proving no impediment. All ten of his fingers worked now, massaging her upper back, deftly avoiding her spine. He was unforgiving but gentle, too, and despite the fact that no part of Varric touched her but his hands, Cassandra was keenly aware of his solid bulk behind her. He radiated heat.

Head lolling forward, Cassandra closed her eyes. She would not think too hard about how long it had been since anyone had touched her with more than a perfunctory healer’s hands. She would not consider the neglected fire’s fading light and the innumerable dangers it invited - not all of them the schemes of their enemies.

Varric’s hands had not stopped moving but they had slowed, seeking out the tender knots he hadn’t yet worked. One thumb pressed hard against a particularly stubborn bundle of nerves in her right shoulder while his other hand surprised her, carefully elevating and pulling her arm, forcing the muscle to extend. A sound escaped Cassandra as the pressure mounted and then released, Varric lowering her arm as gingerly as he’d lifted it.

“Okay, Seeker?”

His voice was whisper-quiet.

“Yes.”

Her left shoulder, then. The middle of her back. And then her neck again, but this time Varric’s touches were feather light, fingers glancing from skin to hairline. Cassandra felt his calluses, his blunt nails. She broke out in gooseflesh all over, tingling from scalp to toes with a not inconsiderable warmth in between her legs.

Cassandra almost let him carry on; she could feel his fingers on her scalp now, tentatively reaching for her braid. She imagined unraveling under his hands, in his arms. It was too much like a story.

Like one of _his_ stories.

Cold air swept between them as she scooted forward.

“That feels much better, thank you,” Cassandra said briskly, busying herself with her discarded cuirass. She wouldn’t normally have put it back on at this time of night, but she wanted to armor herself, desperately.

“Good.” Varric had taken a step back, clapping his hands together. It was too loud, too forced, and his voice was, too. “That’s good.”

“What’s good?”

The Inquisitor appeared smiling at the camp’s edge, Solas beside her.

“That you’re here,” Varric began even as Cassandra opened and closed her mouth, searching for something to say. “The Seeker was about to commit a crime of passion.”

Cassandra balked but the Inquisitor only laughed.

“Sometimes I think you have a death wish, Varric. What are you two arguing about now?”

“Maybe I do,” he said in his easy drawl, though his eyes on Cassandra were heavy. “But no harm done. You’ve arrived just in time to keep her from doing something she’ll regret.”

Words weren’t sufficient to convey her frustration, her disgust, her thwarted heart.

So Cassandra just grunted and turned away.


End file.
